Economic and Tourism Impacts
Economic and Tourism Impacts
Florida Keys, FL
Okanagan Valley, BC, Canada
Agrotourism-Dependent Areas: Crop and Visitor Risk Move Together Agrotourism is unusually exposed because the visitor product and the crop are often the same asset. A winery, u-pick orchard, maple operation or harvest festival can lose production and visitor revenue in the same season, and one business may face several exposure windows: winter chill, spring fruit set, summer drought or wildfire and harvest timing. The El Niño signal also varies by region and commodity, so destination organizations should treat crop forecasts and visitor forecasts as a single planning input rather than assume a uniform outcome.
snowier northern winters may prompt increased seasonal visitor demand, although the scale of such demand will depend on exchange rates, policy conditions, travel costs and household finances. Atlantic and Gulf Coast Marine Tourism: Reef Heat and Hurricane Tradeoffs El Niño brings a mix of benefits and risks for marine tourism. On the positive side, El Niño typically reduces Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing wind shear, although the risk of a hurricane is not fully ruled out. An active hurricane season in 2023 demonstrated that other factors, such as unusually warm ocean waters, can offset El Niño-related effects. More damaging are mass coral-bleaching events that have often coincided with an El Niño cycle, including events during 1982-83, 1997- 98, 2014-17, and 2023-24. In 2023, a heatwave in the Florida Keys prompted widespread bleaching. In the Florida Keys, the 2023 marine heatwave produced the hottest regional water temperatures in the satellite record and widespread bleaching. Florida’s reef economy supports billions of dollars in tourism, fishing,
recreation and coastal protection, while reef- related diving and snorkeling alone support thousands of jobs. Reef-dependent destinations should therefore use NOAA Coral Reef Watch alerts as a standing seasonal planning input. Bleaching should also be described precisely as heat stress rather than automatic coral death; the 2016 Flower Garden Banks event was the site’s worst recorded bleaching but produced no confirmed mortality. Destination messaging should separate reef condition from access or closure status and maintain hurricane readiness even when basin-wide activity is forecast below normal. The exposure extends beyond the Florida Keys. Flower Garden Banks supports a small but specialized Texas and Louisiana liveaboard dive market, and Gulf wildlife tourism supports fishing, boating and wildlife-watching businesses across five states. National coastal tourism and recreation contributes more than $200 billion to GDP. Because a single major landfall can outweigh several quiet seasons, destination organizations should track reef heat, local access conditions and storm proximity separately rather than collapse them into one regional risk label.
off during the strong 2023–24 El Niño winter. Niagara icewine is directly vulnerable to winters that do not sustain the required cold, while Napa’s wet 1997–98 spring reduced fruit set but produced some concentrated, well-reviewed wines. • In Florida, by contrast, ENSO phase is only one factor among citrus greening, hurricanes and individual cold-air outbreaks. The operational lesson is to communicate probabilities, not promises, and to distinguish an El Niño-linked mechanism from broader climate volatility. Destination organizations should combine NOAA outlooks with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada crop-condition, chill-hour and drought data; prepare down-vintage messaging before losses occur; pair weather-dependent products with less sensitive experiences; and coordinate with agricultural extension services. A detailed regional analysis appears in the appendix.
The strongest cases show both the scale and the attribution challenge.
• Wineries in the Okanagan region of British Columbia endured a sequence of freeze, drought and wildfire impacts across 2022–24, culminating in an almost complete 2024 vintage write-
8 | RESEARCH REPORT - DMO RESILIENCY
RESEARCH REPORT - DMO RESILIENCY | 9
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